by Yolanda, 61, owns a home in the predominantly Black 7th Ward neighborhood of New Orleans.
To fix her leaky roof in 2020, she had to borrow money.
“One of them is credit card loans,” she said. “Like 30% interest and all that, you know. I was kind of backed up against the wall, so I went ahead and took out the loan, a high-interest loan.”
As a sociologist who has spent 10 years studying housing conditions in the United States, I led a research team that conducted interviews with homeowners struggling with basic maintenance such as rotting wood siding and floors, mold, crumbling bricks , outdated plumbing and leaks. ceilings. Our first paper from this project is currently under peer review.
Like Yolanda, our interviewees were black women over the age of 60 – whom we have given pseudonyms to protect their privacy – who lived in old buildings in neighborhoods that suffered the pressure of discrimination – such as redlining and uneven land use decisions – and disinvestment.
Once a vibrant area of Black businesses and homes, the 7th Ward has become an area of high poverty since the I-10 freeway was built in the 1960s right through its heart.
Yolanda had already lived there for ten years before the highway was built.
Although brightly painted, Yolanda’s home is only separated from I-10 by an empty lot, and the constant noise and higher pollution rates make it hard to imagine Yolanda being able to sell her home on use profit or its diminished value as equity. .
Did Yolanda get a high interest loan for anything?
Was she throwing good money after bad?
These are not easy questions to answer.
Like other Black female homeowners we interviewed, Yolanda had to choose between debt and poverty.
As she explained, she was “backed up against a wall.”
A racial and sexual history of unrest
According to a 2022 analysis of federal census data by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, nearly a third of homeowners earning less than US$32,000 – about 4.8 million people – spent nothing on maintenance or improvements.
I have noticed that there are worrying trends in the circumstances of those who are in poor housing.
In my book, “Stacked Decks,” I explore the connections between urban housing, race, gender and income inequality.
Since at least the 1970s, real estate agents and lenders have taken advantage of the precarious financial situation of Black women and sold them mortgages on homes that were in bad shape.
Today – 50 years later – these homes pose more health and safety risks to their owners than when they first bought them.
Studies show that after less than two years of ownership, poor repair makes it difficult for low-income homeowners to maintain a habitable home.
Unaddressed repairs such as leaky roofs or broken pipes often lead to code violations and court cases, prompting liens, foreclosures and the potential for homelessness.
The situation is worse for Black women, who, on average, have far less wealth than their white or male counterparts. Without money to pay for repairs, female homeowners end up with more debt if they do repairs.
Climate change means these problems are getting worse as a result of increased rainfall and extreme temperatures.
Doris, a homeowner in Chicago, told us in 2021 about her old leaky roof and flooding in her basement. She explained that the flooding was caused in part by the overflowing of drainage pipes owned by the nearby city.
“Every time it rains, the water comes in,” she said. “When the sewer wasn’t clean … I had so much water coming into my basement that my washer and dryer were floating on top of the water.” An insurance claim covered some of the costs of this repair for Doris, and the city is testing new ways to deal with flood water, but water still seeps in during hard rains.
Racism and sexism in the housing industry
The racism in the housing industry is now well known. The real estate industry, at various points in history, has excluded Black Americans from home ownership, included them through predatory lending and deals and reinforced racial segregation by denying loans to Black and other minority residents. Known as redlining, the practice became a self-fulfilling prophecy of disinvestment and declining values.
But real estate agents and mortgage brokers were sexist as well.
These real estate agents and mortgage brokers knew that Black women had limited options and assumed that they would likely default on their mortgages.
Black women were consistently sold houses that needed repairs.
A lot can happen to a house in 50 years.
Buildings naturally deteriorate over time, due to the combination of aging building materials and weather. At some point, every home needs repairs and preventative maintenance.
Chicagoan Kimberly takes care of her grandson almost full time and told us about her worries about the rotten wood on her back porch being dangerous to stand on.
“We don’t go out the back door at all,” Kimberly said. “We haven’t used that in years. Four years now. Four years we didn’t use the back porch at all.”
Environmental degradation and injustice
Deterioration is an environmental injustice issue. The government has a responsibility to help make repairs because of its role in housing discrimination that created such racial disparities in housing conditions.
But, like disaster relief, help for homeowners is uneven and hard to come by.
US cities often use lotteries to distribute funds for repairs, and the number of homes in need of repair barely scratches the surface.
While all homes require repair work over time, poor repair disproportionately affects those with the least resources, as maintenance is expensive. Poor repair also has health and safety problems, as do other environmental injustices, such as the siting of highways and the siting of polluting factories.
Poor repair can force people to leave their homes because they cannot afford repairs.
But making repairs can make debt worse.
All this means that owning a home, or even paying a mortgage, does not guarantee that homes will remain affordable, an asset or a safe haven.
Recognizing poor conditions as environmental racism may be one step in ensuring that homes are all of these things.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a non-profit, independent news organization that brings you reliable facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. Written by: Robin Bartram, Tulane University
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Robin Bartram does not work for, consult with, own shares in, or receive funding from, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations to, any company or organization that would benefit from this article. beyond his academic appointment.
